In “Stumbling Into the Next Stage of Your Pandemic Life,” psychotherapist Lindsey Antin describes the complicated psychology of “returning” (asamonitor.pub/3lv1nYo). For some people, returning means coming out of quarantine and going back to their work or practice in person. That doesn't apply to us. Anesthesiologists have been on the front lines of this pandemic for its entirety. The sprint we started 18 months ago has become a marathon. And not just any marathon, but a marathon seemingly occurring “right next to a nuclear reactor” (asamonitor.pub/3DwOcww).
The result has been an uneasy mixture of positive and negative emotions. Gratitude, enhanced meaning and purpose, community cohesion, hope for the future, and confidence in our resilience have co-existed with cumulative grief, exhaustion, fear, uncertainty, anger, and moral distress (BMJ 2021;373:n1543; asamonitor.pub/3AxNRYu; J Appl Soc Psychol June 2021; Front Psychol 2021;12:648112). What does it mean...
